Newcomer / Intro Cold builds?

[Shadowscream]

Just watched videos of both an Engineered Vulture & Chieftain running Frosty Cold in Haz Rez PvE
Is this just because of Thermal Vent Beam Lasers? Or is there more to it?
What advantages does this bring in Standard PvE?

And, can It be done on a Viper III?
My son and I are just finishing up on the Easy Engineer Unlocks (Martuuk, Farseer, Tod and The Dweller), with a view to Engineering his Viper. So we are a bit limited on what we can do....

Thanks!

 

[Ethaidan]

Any ship can be set up to run cold - some are just better suited to by their base statistics (I believe the DBX is one of the best natural cold runners). The choice of loadout & engineering are essential. If you can get away with a smaller Power Plant with G5 Low Emissions / Thermal Spread, great. Getting the speed you want out of G5 Clean Drives / Thermal Spread, also great. Running shieldless without Shield Boosters will also lower your heat and signature, but you need to be comfortable with evasion, chaff, cold running and heat sinks as part of your combat technique. It depends on what you want out of a cold runner.

 

[Ashnak]

Advantages?
Other ships ( NPCs, players, stations) have a harder time to lock onto your ship, you can usually go cold running for longer - and you might get the occasional giggle if NPCs complain on comms that those missiles come out of nowhere.
Disadvantage: in order to work best, you'll need to run shieldless.

 

[Chase Quinnell]

Any ship can be set up to run cold - some are just better suited to by their base statistics (I believe the DBX is one of the best natural cold runners). The choice of loadout & engineering are essential. If you can get away with a smaller Power Plant with G5 Low Emissions / Thermal Spread, great. Getting the speed you want out of G5 Clean Drives / Thermal Spread, also great. Running shieldless without Shield Boosters will also lower your heat and signature, but you need to be comfortable with evasion, chaff, cold running and heat sinks as part of your combat technique. It depends on what you want out of a cold runner.

Cold builds fascinate me. I want to build one at some point once I have more engineering unlocked.

 

[Northpin]

For combat, cold builds make sense only for an initial sneak alpha strike. The moment you attack someone you become targetable.
Only Gimbals are affected by running cold since their tracking cone depends on heat signature, but if the the opponents has any emissive weapon there goes your low signature.

For for sneaking around megaships in silent run to interact with them without getting bounties

As for OP's question: running cold because of thermal vent might allow the beams to fire longer at low Wep capacitor without overheating your ship or getting the beams in thermal lockdown

 

[Dommarraa]

We did a few HCZ in a Wing of a couple of Vettes and a Ultra Cold DBS.
While the DBS didnt do a lot of damage, it also took the least damage of all. We believe the only damage it took was from running into its own Wingmen.

 

[Northpin]

We did a few HCZ in a Wing of a couple of Vettes and a Ultra Cold DBS.
While the DBS didnt do a lot of damage, it also took the least damage of all. We believe the only damage it took was from running into its own Wingmen.

The attention we get in the HCZ depends of the damage done and if there are bigger and more important targets in the vicinity
My vulture was Winged with a Conda i think and while i never lost my shields, the Conda got close enough in more than one occasion - she was getting all the attention.


So it might be normal and not necessarily due to the cold build

 

[Chrystoph]

I have a Rapid Fire Pulse Vulture with Thermal Spread on an A rated plant, and Thermal Spread on the Thrusters. It isn't the fastest choice, but I can fire for a good long time, and it cools off with 2 or 3 seconds.

 

[Ethaidan]

For combat, cold builds make sense only for an initial sneak alpha strike. The moment you attack someone you become targetable.
Only Gimbals are affected by running cold since their tracking cone depends on heat signature, but if the the opponents has any emissive weapon there goes your low signature.

For for sneaking around megaships in silent run to interact with them without getting bounties

As for OP's question: running cold because of thermal vent might allow the beams to fire longer at low Wep capacitor without overheating your ship or getting the beams in thermal lockdown

Actually, that depends how well you manage heat sinks, breaking line of sight and cold running after your initial attack. Large ships have big blind spots and turn slowly.

 

[Kayvan]

I've recently been informed that Clean Drives are bugged and don't actually reduce thermal load. But they do give a speed boost without increasing the heat like Dirty Drives do.

Smallest possible power plant with best possible efficiency + thermal spread.

And yeah thermal vents really work wonders. It's important to note that TV actually works best on overcharged beams.
For instance, the Chieftain is quite prone to heat issues, especially when you use high-TL weapons like Plasmas. I used to apply them to Efficient beams and it did next to nothing. Yesterday I installed 2 small OC TV beams and all of a sudden I get a frozen cockpit with all guns blazing.

 

[sinisalo]

I love cool-runners, and all of my ships are built with heat in mind. Clean drives are a trap in my view. I do not recommend them, but blaze your own!

I prefer Coriolis as my shipyard, but it does not do heat well. EDSY does, displays your idle accurately and has a handy THM section with a WEP rating that shows heat at full throttle with all weapons firing. Very handy for theory-crafting heat-minded builds.

 

[Northpin]

I've recently been informed that Clean Drives are bugged and don't actually reduce thermal load

Are they really bugged?
Maybe it's a misunderstanding somewhere?

As in: G5 Clean Drives are not reducing thermal load in supercruise because they use more power than G5 Dirty Drives and thermal load depends on pp efficiency and power usage
But in normal space, under abnormal conditions, like Skardee 1 for example - they show their value, sure a niche one, especially when maneuvering and boosting

So, the general consensus is that they're not really worth it.

 

[Kayvan]

Ah maybe that's the reason then -- i.e. they nominally have reduced thermal load but that's eaten up by the increased power draw. Very well possible.

Basically anything that is supposed to do combat needs Dirty Drag Drives, and these will add about 3% heat compared to unmodded thrusters. (At least on the ships where I compared before/after).

 

[Dragsham]

I have a diamond back scout railer that supercruises at 10% heat.
Also a conda miner at 12% heat. If l remove the shields it drops to 10%.
Allows me to mine unmolested by anyone cos unless I'm actually mining cmdrs or npcs can't see me.
The scout railer is experimental for railing but its limited firepower negates the cold aspect entirely. Why have a railer with 2 rails that can fire alot yes, and remain cooler for longer whilst firing, when l can have a armoured powerplant allowing more firepower with slightly less cooling.
Apart from smuggling and mining in populated systems there's not much point.
Thermally vented efficient beams will drop your temp to zero, good when using alot of incendiary multicannons like on my cutter which has 6 multicannons 5 incendiary 1 corrosive and 1 huge vented beam to cool it with.
My miner..

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

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[sinisalo]

This is what I wrote last week in a Beluga thread. I am not the final arbiter and freely admit I could be wrong. It's just my take on it. A re-post from that thread so I don't have to type it out again...


I call clean drives a trap. By all means use them if you like them, I did too for a long time. I focus on heat in my builds, and I believed clean drives were the right solution. I had the Orca, an AspX, DBX and even an Anaconda using clean drives! I know right?

One day I happened to notice that clean drives draw more power. And since power draw is what creates heat I wondered how much cooler clean drives actually are. So I ran some tests.

I had been under the mistaken impression that dirty drives would make the ship hotter all of the time, something I did not want in my cool ships. What I found was there is some increase in thermal load, but only when the thrusters are being used. Makes sense right? But what I failed to consider is that the thrusters are only used when speed is changed or the ship is maneuvered. So as soon as you reach a stable speed and attitude the thrusters stop producing heat and the ship returns to it's cool state.

Even then, the difference was a few percentage points of heat. Where it really shows is chain-boosting, where the additional heat stacks through the boosts. Once I realized this I re-did my ships with dirty drives. They become much faster, and since dirty drives draw less power than clean, some of the heat gain is traded off intrinsically. For a point or three of heat, the loss in speed potential is not worth the trade off in my view.

My clean drive days are in the past now. And as Ashnak noted, this does not apply to supercruise, so anyone using clean drives for say better scooping is not getting the benefit they think they are. It only has an effect in normal space, and even then, as my test showed, the difference is minor.

 

[Dragsham]

Ahh see yes correct above post!
Except 2 things.
Firstly in normal space with shields up thrusters being used whilst l search for a rock
When I find one l deploy. Only then does she go above 12%. Shieldless 10%. The latter being almost invisible. So I can fly about in a ring not deployed right under their noses and not be seen or attacked.
Now l know some are under the impression npcs see all. Perhaps they do who am l to change doctrine. But l CAN mine unmolested. That's a fact. Only when I deploy and Use something will she be exposed. If I'm spotted I drop a sink and cruise out not boost. One or two rocks after I've moved round em the npcs lose me. My temp is 12% again.
In supercruise I can get to my sell point 10 jumps away without a single interdiction.
Now that's cool. Scuse the pun

 

[sinisalo]

I also make the claim that thermal vent beams (when striking and actually cooling the ship) cloak the ship against NPC sensors. I don't know for a fact that this is true, but empirically it seems to be so. If true, TV beams would be quite useful in a busy combat space, against wings and wingmen, and CZs. I use them on virtually all of my ships, not only because I think it may be useful from a defensive point of view (like unlimited heatsinks) but also because the iced-over 'pit is so cool, pun sort of intended.

Thermal vent beams only have so much cooling capacity, so in order to reach 0% heat your ship needs to be relatively cool to start with, depending I guess on how many thermal vents beams you mount. I only use two and that's plenty to ice over my combat Krait (28% idle) for example, in seconds.